Cooling elements to cool a component of a battery system are sufficiently known and serve for discharging undesirable heat which arises when the battery system is in operation. For this purpose, a cooling element may be formed by cooling ducts. Via the cooling ducts, a cooling medium, such as, for example, water, is capable of flowing therethrough, so that, for example, heat from battery cells resting against the cooling element is transferred to the cooling element, and further on to the cooling medium and is then discharged out of the surroundings of the battery cells by the flow of cooling medium. The cooling medium itself may be cooled, for example, via an air-conditioning circuit in a vehicle, in which case, however, a corresponding air-conditioning unit has to be present and the tie-up to an air-conditioning circuit is complicated.
It is known, on the other hand, that Peltier elements may be used in order to cool a battery system. Thus, German Patent Publication No. DE 10 2009 005 853 A1 discloses a battery system which comprises at least one battery and, furthermore, comprises at least one Peltier element which serves for cooling and/or heating at least one battery.
German Patent Publication No. DE 10 2012 103 131 A1 discloses a motor vehicle having a vehicle battery, the vehicle battery being coolable via at least one Peltier element assigned to the vehicle battery. However, cooling solely by Peltier elements is not very efficient.
A simple combination of a cooling element having cooling ducts, on the one hand, with additional cooling by Peltier elements, on the other hand, would necessitate an undesirably large construction space in, for example, a motor vehicle.